"Ed Howdershelt - Anne" - читать интересную книгу автора (Howdershelt Ed)

he sent me to the office with orders to wait for him there.
When Jim Terry came in and sat down a few minutes after I did, the biddy
behind the counter looked at us as if we smelled bad and might possibly stain
the waiting bench.
"Got me, too," said Jim, "Run or play. Screw it. What can they really do
to us for not wanting to run or play football?"
"Excommunicate us, maybe. Rant and rave until we give in or go deaf."
People came and went for most of an hour. Most pretended not to notice us,
but some gave us disapproving looks. We were on the principal's bench,
reserved for wrong-thinkers and troublemakers. I sat reading the paperback
that I'd planned to read during PE class. Jim just sat back and waited.
Mrs. Barnell came in and checked her in-box, then made arrangements to
have some test papers mimeographed. She leaned over the counter making notes
in a folder and talking to the clerk and her skirt rose a bit as she leaned
even farther to put something on the clerk's desk.
"Wow. Great legs, huh?" said Jim. I agreed. We spent some time pretending
not to be staring at her as she organized her schedules.
Anne Barnell was a young and pretty teacher, the object of much adolescent
lust and many female students' resentment or envy. She was nearly six feet
tall with flat shoes and seemed to look a little bit like a combination of
Natalie Wood and Ingrid Bergman to me. She had auburn hair that flowed below
her shoulders and brown eyes that had appeared in some of my best dreams.
Widowed when a Viet Cong missile hit her Navy husband's plane, she had
continued at her teaching post, trying to jam bits of History and pieces of
English grammar into her students' heads.
Like most other high school students, I didn't know very much about my
teachers' off-duty lives, but I did know that she spent more time at the
school after the last bell than the other teachers.
The paperback was suddenly snatched from me by Coach Keller. He broke the
binding and tore it in two, then tossed the pieces in my lap.
"You aren't here to have a good time. You're here because you're in
trouble with me, and that means you don't read or eyeball the women."
Mrs. Barnell turned around at that comment. I smiled and shrugged at her
as I rose to place both pieces of the book on the counter and calmly told the
blue-hair behind it to notify the school library that Coach Keller owed them a
book. I noted Mrs. Barnell observing my actions.
The coach grabbed our arms and walked us into the principal's office,
where we wound up suspended for three days. I wondered aloud how missing
classes for three days would benefit our educations and how a dislike of team
sports could justify suspension from the true purposes of attending a school
and was offered another three days off.
Things were definitely getting out of hand when Mrs. Barnell asked to
speak with the principal. Perhaps ten minutes later, we were told that our
parents would be notified and that we were still suspended from school for
three days. We had no idea what had been said in there.
She spoke with our parents. The school's psychologist was persuaded we
should be kept from PE classes for the duration of the semester, probably just
to keep us away from other students. We were also assigned to after-school
detention, one of Mrs. Barnell's classes.
Detention meant staying after school an hour a day for two weeks. Mrs.